The present invention relates to system and method for displaying, navigating and selecting electronically stored content on a multifunction handheld device. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method for navigating among activities stored in processor readable memory of an electronic edutainment device having processor in electrical communication with a contact-sensitive display and the memory.
Multifunction handheld electronic devices typically have a form factor driven by the desire to have the devices be as small and light as possible. Accordingly, such devices, whether they are used for business, education, or entertainment, have relatively small electronic displays and in most instance a plurality of related applications stored in memory such as contacts, calendars, to-do lists, spread sheets and the like in the business world; reading and writing programs in the education world, and various games with common characters or themes in the entertainment world.
The size of the menus of selectable content that must be presented to the user before an activity may be selected and launched generally exceeds the viewable area of the typical display screen on multifunction handheld electronic devices. In desk-top systems such as work stations and personal computers, the displays are large enough to allow the user to navigate among the content using cascading drop-down menus that remain on the screen as the user proceeds from level to level of the taxonomic scheme for organizing the relationship among content elements or programs. This approach is not adaptable to the small screen size of the displays on handheld devices.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a system and method for displaying, navigating and selecting electronically stored content on a multifunction handheld device having a small contact-sensitive display.